Page 40 of Sixth
Chapter 10
THE SHIP’Sviewport filled with the forest’s burning color and the smoke of its own breathinghush.
Emmy stood just inside the open ramp of their ship, with her pulse thudding high in her throat, Lume perched on her shoulder chattering frantically. The air tasted like metal and sap. Every leaf glowed, then dimmed, then glowed again, as if the trees could not decide whether to breathe.
She could still see the last image stamped behind her eyes. The Echo Predator a dark sweep of sinew and teeth. Voss turning too late. The impact that should have shatteredhim.
Silence fell so hard that the motes of light seemed to freeze.
Apex didn’t move. He stood protectively close, tall and still, weapon sighting the Predator. Then he fired—clean, deliberate, asingle burst of light that slammed into its flank and sent it crashing back into the trees with a roar. Smoke curled through the air. The faint shimmer that rolled off his skin looked like heathaze. He didn’t fire again because he never wasted a shot. He did nothing without deciding first that he’dwin.
He lowered the weapon with a measured breath. “Voss lives.”
Her head jerked. “You saw that thing hit him. There’s no way.”
“I know what I said.” His gaze held to the dark line of trees where the Predator had disappeared. “Death would be too merciful for a man like him.”
She wanted to call him wrong. The word stuck. Somewhere inside the black edge of the clearing an engine throbbed to life. Blue light strobed across trunks and vines. Voss’s ship awakened from its crouch like some metal beast smelling blood.
Figures spilled from the shadows and ran in a broken wedge toward the place where Voss had fallen. She couldn’t help herself. She stepped closer, stopped an instant later by Apex’s hand. Light swung over broken brush and a slice of trampled growth.
They lifted him between them. His face was a ruin of blood and ash. His eyes were closed. His chest rose once. Then again. Alive.
“No,” she whispered.
Apex watched without expression while they carried Voss into the open hatch. The engines climbed from snarl to roar. Heat slammed across the clearing and flattened the nearest fronds. The ship lifted, spat dust and sparks, then knifed up through the canopy. It was gone in seconds, astreak of dim fire swallowed by cloud, swiftly followed by the Councilor’s ship.
Her heartbeat tripped and stuttered. “He’s going to come back.”
“He will try,” Apex said. “We will not be here.”
The forest brightened by degrees. The glow rolled out from the trees as if the world exhaled. The air stroked her skin in a cool, charged caress. Emmy couldn’t decide whether the sensation comforted or unnerved her. She lifted her hand and the hair along her arm rose. The planet awoke, aware, impossibly present.
She said it under her breath anyway. “I think it’s listening.”
“It is.” Apex turned toward a narrow path where the ground gleamed like old glass. “This world observes. It will remember you.”
“For what?”
“For surviving,” he said. “For choosing.”
The path beyond the ramp was already alive with light, vines swaying back as though bowing farewell. From the ramp, she could still see the pale stream to their left, clear as spun glass and pricked with tiny stars. The sound reached them even here, asteady pulse against the metallic hum of the ship. She breathed with it and tried to let the tremor bleed out of her hands.
Apex stood protectively near the ramp controls, one hand on the hull beside her as if securing her to what was safe. Behind them, the ship spilled a wedge of warm interior glow. He looked back the way they had come, measuring. Wind shifted through the canopy outside. The light rippled once, twice.
“It knows we are leaving,” hesaid.
Lume chittered in agreement, then added, “Leaving. Yes.”
“Will the planet be all right?”
He didn’t look at her right away. When he did, his eyes had softened by a fraction. “If Echo Light has the will and the ability to continue, it will do so.”
Her laugh came out thin. “You almost sound like you care.”
He inclined his head. “I respect resilience. Say goodbye to Lume. Then back inside. Now.”
Emmy crouched near the ramp, and Lume fluttered closer, her wings trembling with light. The tiny creature chirped a string of soft notes that sounded heartbreakingly close to words.
